COME UP HERE by Rex Shannon
The first time I spoke to God, I was eating a boiled egg at a diner with my parents. We sat at a corner booth, which was better for my dad’s back. He ordered banana pancakes, and my mother ordered a tuna sandwich.
Halfway through the meal, I heard a voice say: Take your mother’s tuna sandwich and throw it on the ground.
Heard might be misleading. When God speaks to you, it doesn’t sound like a voice in your head. It’s definitely not a booming voice. If you read the Bible, you’d think God had this deep baritone. That’s not right. It feels like having a thought that you know is really God’s.
He repeated himself: Abraham, I want you to pick up that tuna sandwich and throw it on the ground.
I knew it was God, but I needed to make sure.
God?
Speaking, he said.
You want me to throw this tuna sandwich on the ground?
I do. And right now.
He counted down. Five, he said. Four. Three.
I grabbed my mother’s sandwich.
And the plate, God said. Also break the plate.
I stood up on the booth’s cushions to raise the plate as high as possible. I felt I needed more velocity.
Abraham, Dad said, what are you doing?
Mother pulled at my slacks, horrified, begging me to give her plate back. I was going to drop it – I really was – but he stopped me.
Enough, God said. Put it down.
I obeyed.
What the hell was that? Dad said.
Dad, Mother said. Don’t use that pottymouth around Abraham.
Nice plate, I said. Just making sure.
Making sure of what? my dad asked.
Making sure it was nice.
We continued eating. The waiter refilled Dad’s coffee. When he leaned over the table, he tipped my mother’s plate onto the ground, where it cracked into three perfect pieces. A laser couldn’t have made cuts more exact.
Terribly sorry, the waiter said.
Richard, look, my mother said, three identical pieces.
My dad made a sign of the cross. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, he said. It’s a sign, is what it is. A sign.
God provides, God said.
My mother took out her disposable camera and asked the waiter to take a photo of the three of us holding up a different piece of the plate.
Very good, Abraham, God said as the camera flashed. Now I know you love me.
If my parents freaked out about the plate, I imagined how they’d react to my contact with God. They’d go nuts. I couldn’t tell them, so I didn’t.
God started to talk to me after every Mass. Never during. I reached out to him – I had to, I was at Mass, that’s what you do – but he never responded until we left the chapel doors. Mass was generally nice, he told me once, but a little cloying.
Wow, he said one Sunday. Now that was a doozy.
The Mass? I asked.
Yes, God said. Talk about a snooze fest. The way that guy interpreted the letter to the Philippians? Not what Paul meant, obviously.
What did Paul mean? I asked.
Well, God said, pausing. Well. Yours is not to ask why.
Isn’t Father Seamus just doing his best? He can’t possibly know it as well as you, right?
God didn’t like when I called him out like that. I felt him pull away from me.
It’s easy to tell when the connection is severed and he’s no longer with you. You feel less warm, for one thing, and you get this tickle in your hands that you can’t shake, like he left through your fingertips.
He returned next Sunday, as Dad drove our Escort out of the church lot.
Sorry for what I said last week, I said.
Water under the bridge, my friend. Water under the bridge.
Thank you for forgiving me.
Do you truly want to be forgiven? he asked.
Of course, I said. I’ll do anything. This was God I was speaking to, after all.
When you get home, I want you to go to your father’s record player and play me some Rock and Roll.
Nobody, not even Mother, was allowed to touch Dad’s record player. Every few weeks, my dad came into the kitchen and said: Why don’t you and your mother take a walk? This meant he wanted to listen to his Men – that’s what he called the band he liked. I heard his whispers to Mother: You and Abraham go to the park, OK? I’m going to listen to my Men.
His Men were hardcore. I knew this because when we approached our house, red-faced from the cold, I could hear their electric guitars rumbling through the air. I liked to think that was the sound telephone wires or lightning would make, if we could hear them. When he saw us through the window, he shut it off, but you could still feel the vibrations in the metal fence around our property. In the trash, there’d be four or five Diet Cokes that weren’t there before.
Enjoy your walk? my dad asked, covered in sweat.
Very much thanks, my mother said back, blushing. My mother loved when my dad sweated.
Go upstairs, you two, Mother said, and don’t come back down until you’re clean.
Oh, God, I said. I don’t know about that. Dad loves his record player.
I felt the connection loosen.
Wait, I said. OK. I’ll do it. Of course I’ll do it.
Very nice, he said. That’s what I expect from you.
When we got home from Mass, my dad turned on the TV and started watching football. My mother crocheted, as she did when my dad watched the Niners. I walked straight up to my parents’ bedroom.
I could feel my heart in my ears. Entering Dad and Mother’s room was forbidden. I didn’t even know what it looked like.
Under the bed, God said.
I walked over to my dad’s bed – they didn’t share – and pulled out the record player.
Lovely, he said. Now lock the door.
I obeyed.
Put on something heavy, God said, and crank it.
I looked for my dad’s rock and roll record, which wasn’t hard to find. It was the only one he owned. God showed me how to work the turntable. I put on the LP and hovered my hand above the tone arm, waiting for God to intervene.
Well? he said.
You’re not going to stop me?
No, he said. Hit it.
I let it fall. A church bell rang several times. I expected guitars.
This is it? I asked.
Wait for it, God said.
I’m waiting, I said.
Wait for it. Just wait for it.
The guitars started.
Louder, God said.
I turned it up.
Louder, God said.
That’s maximum, I yelled.
The guitars were so loud I could hear them in my chest, vibrating my ribs. I felt powerful with those guitars playing like that. And then the vocals came in.
Wow, I yelled to God over the music. No wonder my dad likes this so much.
Fuck yeah, God yelled back. I like this, but I think Scott will always be the true frontman. You? I mean, Johnson’s voice is great. But Scott’s stage presence! That’s how you can tell an iconic vocalist from a so‑so vocalist, if they put on a show.
God was really jamming out. I could feel it. It felt good to make him feel good.
It didn’t take long for my father to break down the door. He head-butted it off its hinges and stormed in, a bruise already forming on his scalp. He yanked the tone arm off so violently it snapped. That really set him off. He loved that record player. My mother ran in sobbing.
Richard, Richard, leave it, she said.
Go back and watch the game, he said.
Then he took me to my room. I thought I was going to be beaten to death, but when he took off his shirt and belt he whipped himself.
Look what you’re making me do, he said.
Fat red welts sprang up all over his back with each lash.
What kind of son does this to his father? You are flogging me. Put down the whip, Abraham, he whimpered. You’re hurting me.
He lashed himself for a long time. Eventually the pain was too much and he crumpled to the floor. He lay face down like that, raw and bleeding, until my mother came in and cradled his head in her lap. She stroked his hair. Neither acknowledged me, sitting on the bed with my back against the wall. She sung Dad a lullaby and he fell asleep.
I didn’t speak to my parents or God for a few days. My mother wouldn’t look at me, and my dad skipped work and spent all his time on the couch, reapplying Vaseline to his wounds.
We drove to the next Mass in silence. I heard nothing from God in Mass, like usual, but I felt him connect to me as we pulled out of the parking lot.
What the hell? I asked God. What happened to God provides? My dad’s back is busted.
Listen, he said. I know you’re angry. That’s fair. Your parents will recover. I got carried away back there. But, as you know, God works in mysterious ways.
But you’re God! Don’t you know how you work?
I have a plan.
If you have a plan, I asked him, then what do you need me for?
You’re a vessel, obviously. A vessel of God’s will.
I don’t want to just be a vessel, I said.
Abraham, do you love me?
Of course I love you, I said.
Then show me.
I felt him leave underneath my fingernails.
A few Sundays later, God said: Abraham, there is a mighty task ahead of you today.
What sort of task? I asked.
Yours is not to ask why, he said.
Whenever he got lofty with his words I knew something was serious.
The day seemed normal. We went to Mass, we went Maria’s, the diner. We sat in the corner booth. We still weren’t really talking. Dad ordered his pancakes, Mother ordered her sandwich. The only difference was, turning out of the parking lot, we were T‑boned by a Cadillac going 70 in a 35. I couldn’t see who was driving.
My parents slammed against the interior of the car so violently I thought their necks had snapped. Dad’s back looked broken. Mother’s thigh was impaled by the stick shift. She lay unconscious across the center console. I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, so I launched out of the window and died on impact. I could see my body, a bloody mess beneath the diner’s windows, but I – whatever I was – was still inside the car.
God, I said. We’ve just been in a horrific accident.
So we have, God said.
Help, I said.
I cannot, he said.
I tried to move to my parents to help them. Nothing happened. I looked down. My body, I remembered. I needed my body.
Bring me back, I yelled.
But I was already floating away. I tried to swim back down. It wasn’t working.
Do you love me? God asked.
You know that I love you, I said. But I need to be with them right now. I need to be down there with my parents.
Show me you love me.
Help them, I said.
Come up here, God said, and show me that you love me.
“Come Up Here” is Rex Shannon’s first published story.